Pronouns and Suffixes

Hebrew has separate words for I, you, he, she, we and they, called the independent or personal pronouns. In the Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC), the text the free tools display, the commonest forms are these. I is אֲנִי (ani) or אָנֹכִי (anokhi), two words with no clear difference in meaning, preferred in different books. You is אַתָּה (attah) to a man and אַתְּ (att) to a woman. He is הוּא (hu) and she is הִיא (hi). We is אֲנַחְנוּ (anachnu). You plural is אַתֶּם (attem) to men or a mixed group, with a rarer feminine form. They is הֵם (hem) or הֵמָּה (hemmah). English has one you; Hebrew has four, masculine and feminine, singular and plural, and that difference will matter in Ruth.

The surprising thing is how rarely Hebrew needs them. A Hebrew verb already carries its subject. אֵלֵךְ (elekh) is I will go, with the I in the first letter; תֵּלְכִי (telekhi) is you will go, said to a woman, with the you in the first letter and the feminine in the last. So when a separate pronoun stands beside a verb that already says who acts, the writer has added something. When it stands where there is no verb, it is simply needed.

The needed kind is common in the verbless clauses met in Lesson 2. Psalm 23:4 has כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי (ki attah immadi), 'for You are with me': no verb, so the pronoun you carries the clause. Exodus 20:2 opens אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ (anokhi YHWH elohekha), 'I am the LORD your God', again with no verb. And in 2 Samuel 12:7 the prophet Nathan, having told David the story of the rich man and the poor man's lamb, turns and says אַתָּה הָאִישׁ (attah ha'ish), 'You are that man!' Two words, a pronoun and a noun with the article, and the BSB needs four.

The added kind is where interpretation begins. In the same verse Nathan goes on, speaking for the LORD: אָנֹכִי מְשַׁחְתִּיךָ (anokhi meshachtikha), I anointed you, and וְאָנֹכִי הִצַּלְתִּיךָ (ve'anokhi hitsaltikha), and I delivered you. Each verb already means I did it; the separate anokhi is extra both times. Many readers hear a pointed contrast: you are the man who took; I am the one who gave. In Psalm 23:4 the BSB keeps a similar extra pronoun: 'Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me', where they is הֵמָּה (hemmah) standing before a verb that already means they comfort me.

How much weight should an extra pronoun carry? Grammars have often called such pronouns emphatic. Hebraists such as Takamitsu Muraoka, in a study of emphatic words in biblical Hebrew, have warned that this label has been applied too freely, and that an added pronoun can mark a contrast, a change of subject, a new topic, or simply the rhythm of a line of poetry, without any special stress. So treat an extra pronoun as a question, not an answer. Ask what it might be contrasting or bringing forward, and see whether the context supports your answer. In 2 Samuel 12 it plainly does. In other places it may not.

Hebrew says my people with one word: עַמִּי (ammi), the noun am, people, with the ending -i, my. The same short endings, called pronominal suffixes, attach to nouns, to prepositions and to verbs. On a noun they mean possession. Here is the noun am with each of the commonest endings, every form as it stands in the WLC: עַמִּי (ammi, my people); עַמְּךָ (ammekha, your people, to a man); עַמֵּךְ (ammekh, your people, to a woman); עַמּוֹ (ammo, his people); עַמָּהּ (ammah, her people); עַמֵּנוּ (ammenu, our people); and עַמָּם (ammam, their people). You do not need to memorise the list. You need to see that the end of a noun can carry a person, and to let the tool tell you which.

One small dot is worth learning by sight, because it changes the meaning. A feminine noun often ends in ָה, -ah, as Lesson 1 showed. The suffix her also ends in -ah, but with a dot inside the final he, הּ, called a mappiq, which tells the reader to sound the h. So עַמָּהּ (ammah) in Ruth 1:15 is her people, not a feminine noun. On a small phone screen the dot is easy to miss; the parsing will catch it if your eye does not.

When the noun is plural, the same endings attach with an extra yod between the noun and the ending. That is why the word for God with a suffix always has a yod in it. Ruth 1:15 has אֱלֹהֶיהָ (eloheha, her gods); Ruth 1:16 has וֵאלֹהַיִךְ (velohayikh, and your God, to a woman) and אֱלֹהָי (elohai, my God); Exodus 20:2 has אֱלֹהֶיךָ (elohekha, your God, to a man); and Deuteronomy 6:4 has אֱלֹהֵינוּ (elohenu, our God). Each is the plural noun elohim with an ending, and, as Lesson 1 taught, the plural form tells you nothing by itself about whether one God or many gods are meant. In verse 15 Naomi means Orpah's gods, the gods of Moab; in verse 16 Ruth means Naomi's God, the God of Israel. The Hebrew forms are built the same way, and the BSB rightly renders one gods and the other God.

The same pattern explains a word every Bible reader meets. אֲדֹנִי (adoni) is my lord, the singular noun adon with -i, used of a human master or a king: in Genesis 23:6 the Hittites say it to Abraham. אֲדֹנָי (Adonai) is the plural form with a long final vowel, kept for God: in Isaiah 6:8 Isaiah hears 'the voice of the Lord'. The BSB distinguishes them as lord and Lord. And Adonai, as Module 1's lesson on the vowel points explained, is the word Jewish readers say aloud in place of the divine name, which is why the BSB prints the LORD.

The same endings attach to prepositions, making one word of what English writes as two. Ruth 1:16 begins אַל־תִּפְגְּעִי־בִי (al tifge'i vi), do not press on me: the preposition bet with the ending -i, me. Psalm 23:4 has עִמָּדִי (immadi, with me). Ruth 1:17 ends בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵךְ (beini uveinekh), literally between me and between you, which the BSB renders naturally as 'you and me'. When you see a preposition on your tool that seems to have no noun after it, look for a suffix: the noun is inside the ending.

On verbs, the endings mark the object. Psalm 23 has a run of them, all with the ending -ni, me: יַרְבִּיצֵנִי (yarbitseni, he makes me lie down) in verse 2, יַנְחֵנִי (yancheni, he guides me) in verse 3, and יְנַחֲמֻנִי (yenachamuni, they comfort me) in verse 4. Notice that on a noun my is usually -i, while on a verb me is usually -ni. The subject of a verb is shown in another way altogether, by prefixes and endings that belong to the verb's own pattern, which Module 4 teaches. For now it is enough to know that a single Hebrew verb can carry its subject at one end and its object at the other: yarbitseni is he, cause to lie down, me, all in one word.

Some forms are ambiguous, and the context must decide. The commonest is מִמֶּנּוּ (mimmennu), the preposition min with an ending that can mean from him, from it, or from us. In Genesis 3:22 the LORD God says that the man has become 'like one of Us', and there it means us. In Genesis 2:17, 'for in the day that you eat of it', the same spelling means it, the tree. At the time of writing, the open morphological database published by the Open Scriptures project tags both Genesis 2:17 forms as first person plural, from us, which the context shows cannot be right. That is a useful warning. A parsing is a scholar's judgment written down, and when two readings share a spelling, the judgment can slip. If a parsing makes nonsense of the sentence, check another tool and read the context again.

Two other kinds of pronoun complete the set, and both appear in passages this module has used. The demonstratives this and these are זֶה (zeh) and, for a feminine noun, זֹאת (zot), with the plural אֵלֶּה (elleh). The golden calf scene turns on them: in Exodus 32:4 the people say אֵלֶּה אֱלֹהֶיךָ (elleh elohekha), these are your gods, and in Nehemiah 9:18 the retelling has זֶה אֱלֹהֶיךָ (zeh elohekha), this is your God. Lesson 1 noticed the change in the verb; the pronoun changes with it. And in Isaiah 6:3 the seraphim call זֶה אֶל־זֶה (zeh el zeh), this one to this one, which the BSB renders naturally as 'to one another'. A demonstrative doubled like that is a Hebrew idiom for each other.

The relative word אֲשֶׁר (asher) is the last. It means who, which, that or where, and it never changes its form, whatever its noun. Ruth 1:16 uses it twice: אֶל־אֲשֶׁר (el asher), to where, wherever, and וּבַאֲשֶׁר (uva'asher), and in where, wherever. Hebrew often finishes a relative clause with a pronoun ending that English leaves out, as if one said the place which you go to it. When an interlinear seems to have an extra him, it or there at the end of a clause beginning with asher, that is why, and English versions drop it.

English hides what Hebrew shows. In English Ruth 1:16 could be spoken to anyone. In Hebrew, every you and your in it is feminine singular: לְעָזְבֵךְ (le'ozvekh, to leave you), מֵאַחֲרָיִךְ (me'acharayikh, from following you), תֵּלְכִי (telekhi, you go), תָּלִינִי (talini, you lodge), עַמֵּךְ (ammekh, your people), וֵאלֹהַיִךְ (velohayikh, and your God). A Hebrew listener hears one woman speaking to one woman all the way through. Ruth is not speaking to a husband, a suitor or a congregation. She is a widow binding herself to her widowed mother-in-law.

That fact matters when the verse is used today. It is often read at weddings, and there is nothing wrong with that: it is one of Scripture's great promises of covenant loyalty until death, and a bride and groom may rightly make its words their own. But an honest minister will say who first spoke them and to whom, so the congregation hears the promise in its own setting: loyalty that chose a bitter, empty future with another person rather than a safer one alone. The Hebrew's feminine endings make that setting impossible to miss.

The same chapter also shows that a tool's gender label must be read with care. In Ruth 1:8-9 Naomi speaks to two women. Her commands, לֵכְנָה שֹּׁבְנָה (lekhnah shovnah, go, return), are feminine plural, as expected. Yet with you, עִמָּכֶם (immakhem), and you have shown, עֲשִׂיתֶם (asitem), are masculine plural, and so is to you in verse 9. Hebraists have explained these in more than one way. Some see the masculine plural functioning as a common plural in spoken or older Hebrew, as it sometimes does elsewhere; some see a feature of the dialect or the period of the book; some see a form that once had a distinct ending of its own. The point for you is not to settle that question but to notice when a form is unexpected, and not to build an argument on a gender label without looking at the forms around it.

One more caution about gender belongs here. The Old Testament speaks of God and to God with masculine forms throughout, and the BSB keeps He and His. As Lesson 1 showed, grammatical gender is a way of sorting words, not a claim about a body. Israel's God has no body and no consort, which set Israel's faith apart from its neighbours'. The masculine forms are the grammar Scripture uses, and translators keep them; what they mean is a question for theology, not for the suffix alone.

Now read the heart of the verse. כִּי אֶל־אֲשֶׁר תֵּלְכִי אֵלֵךְ וּבַאֲשֶׁר תָּלִינִי אָלִין (ki el asher telekhi elekh uva'asher talini alin): for where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. The two lines are built as mirror pairs, your verb then mine. The verb in the second pair, from the root ל-י-ן (l-y-n), means to spend the night, to lodge, as the King James Version renders it. The BSB's 'wherever you live, I will live' reads it more broadly, as making one's home; both are fair, since a widow on the road to Bethlehem lodges with Naomi tonight and lives with her after. The Old Testament Survey lesson on Ruth sets the book in its historical setting, and this lesson keeps to its grammar.

Then come two verbless clauses, each only two words: עַמֵּךְ עַמִּי (ammekh ammi), your people, my people, and וֵאלֹהַיִךְ אֱלֹהָי (velohayikh elohai), and your God, my God. There is no verb at all. The BSB supplies 'will be': 'your people will be my people, and your God will be my God'. That is a reasonable choice, because Ruth is promising something about her future. A translator could also supply is, as a declaration already made. The Hebrew allows either, and its very shortness is part of its force. Verse 17 completes the vow: בַּאֲשֶׁר תָּמוּתִי אָמוּת (ba'asher tamuti amut), where you die I will die, and then an oath in the name of the LORD. The Hebrew of the oath is literally thus may the LORD do to me and thus may he add, which the King James Version renders 'the LORD do so to me, and more also', and the BSB, giving the sense of the idiom, 'May the LORD punish me, and ever so severely'. A Moabite woman swears by the name of Israel's God.

Is this a conversion? Two readings deserve a full hearing. The first says yes. Ruth renounces the gods of Moab to which Orpah has returned (1:15), takes Israel's God as her own, and seals it by swearing in the LORD's own name. Boaz later says she has come to take refuge under the wings of 'the LORD, the God of Israel' (Ruth 2:12). Jewish tradition has long read her as the model convert; the Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Yevamot, draws from her conversation with Naomi a pattern for receiving a convert. Christian readers add that Matthew 1:5 names her in the genealogy of Jesus, a Gentile welcomed into the line of the Messiah although Deuteronomy 23:3 barred Moabites from the assembly.

The second reading says that conversion, in the later sense of a personal change of religion with a formal procedure, is not the best word for what Ruth does. In her world a people and its god belonged together, as Naomi assumes when she says Orpah has gone back 'to her people and her gods'. Joining Naomi's people meant joining Naomi's God; the vow is first a pledge of kinship and loyalty to a person, in the language of an oath, and its religious side follows from that. The book's own emphasis falls on her hesed, her loyal kindness, toward Naomi, which Boaz praises in 3:10, 'You have shown more kindness now than before', and Module 5's lesson on Ruth 1 traces that word through the book. Those who read it this way do not deny that Ruth comes to trust Israel's God. They resist reading a later category back into the text.

These readings differ in emphasis more than in substance, and a preacher can honour both. Settled: Ruth binds herself to Naomi, to Naomi's people and to Naomi's God, until death, and swears by the LORD's name. Open: whether the right word for that is conversion, in the sense later Judaism and the church gave it, or covenant loyalty that carries faith within it. Either way the suffixes have done their work: you and I, your and my, over and over in two verses, bound together so that the two women's lives cannot be told apart.

Take out your noun map for the capstone passage. Today you add the pronouns. Use your phone, your notebook and a pen of a new colour if you have one.

First, on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible, tap every noun, preposition and verb in your passage and look for a suffix in the parsing. Wherever there is one, circle the word in your notebook and write its person, gender and number in short form: 1cs for first person common singular, 2fs for second person feminine singular, 3mp for third person masculine plural, and so on. Then write the English the suffix produces: my, your, his, her, me, him, them.

Second, list every separate pronoun in your passage. For each, ask one question: is there a verb beside it that already shows the subject? If there is no verb, write needed. If there is, write added, and then one line on what it might be contrasting or bringing forward. Do not write emphatic unless you can say what is being emphasised and why the context supports it.

Third, wherever your passage addresses someone, write down whether the Hebrew you is masculine or feminine, singular or plural. Check whether your English version lets a reader see that. Finally, write one sentence about a suffix in your passage that changes how you would preach it, as the feminine endings of Ruth 1:16 change how one introduces that verse at a wedding. You will use all of this when you write up your passage at the end of the track.